It was through Ellington that he met Bailey, the great singer and Broadway performer. They married in 1952, and when she died in 1990 at age 72, he told the Philadelphia Daily News that “I just lost my best friend.”

He was designated as a “master of jazz” in 1994 by the National Endowment for the Arts, which said he “ranks among the foremost big-band drummers of the swing and post-swing eras and is best known for his precise technique and the invention of two pedal-operated bass drums.”

Bellson wrote more than 1,000 compositions and arrangements in several genres, including jazz, swing, orchestral suites, symphonic works and ballets. As an author, he published more than a dozen books on drums and percussion.

His final recording, “Louie & Clark Expedition 2” with trumpeter Clark Terry, was released last year.

Bellson was born in 1924 in Rock Falls, Ill., son of Italian immigrants whose family name was originally Balassoni. His father, who eventually opened a music store, taught his son to play drums and other instruments.

Bellson was still in his teens when he pioneered the double bass drum set-up, and two years later he went on to win the Slingerland National Gene Krupa drumming contest.

There are tentative plans for a Los Angeles-area memorial service, followed by a funeral and burial in his boyhood home of Moline, Ill., according to his website.